Running the App

• Set up Neo4j on your workstation.

• Run the test-data.cypher script in your Neo4j DB.

• Install the dependencies with npm install

• Copy the .env.example to .env. Edit if necessary.

• Set the following varaibles to fetch real data from Instagram:

  • INSTAGRAM_USERNAME: your instagram username.
  • INSTAGRAM_PASSWORD: your instagram password.
  • POPULATE_REAL_DATA: 'TRUE' or 'FALSE' to trigger the data fetching and population.
  • Currently the population service fetches 120 photos associated with three static hashtags, 40 each.

    // in src/services/population/population.service.ts
    
    const QUERIES: SearchSpec[] = [
      { hashtag: 'sweden', limit: 40 },
      { hashtag: 'deutschland', limit: 40 },
      { hashtag: 'food', limit: 40 }
    ];

• Start the app with npm start.

Running tests

• First create a test DB named neo4j-test or modify that name in the ./env.test file.
• Run the test/test-data.cypher script to load the mock data in your test DB.
• You can then run tests once with npm test or start the tests in watch mode with npm run test:watch.

TODOs & Future Improvements:

• Add error handling, especially for external requests with the IG service.
• Refactor paginated APIs in IG service and similar methods in the population service.
• Look into refactoring the while loops into for loops or recursive calls.
• Add unit tests.
• Add a custom API to fetch a user by its userId as it's not available in the instagram-web-api package. This should be used in the populateUsers method in the PopulationService.